


The Architect

by droid_girl



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M, Realization, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droid_girl/pseuds/droid_girl
Summary: "He had built world after world for her. Now, he was going to build auniversefor her."Michael examines his choices and makes a decision. Or: how I think Michael should have realized that Eleanor was the reason for everything he's ever done, ever since he became an Architect.Takes place in S03E07 Episode "The Worst Possible Use of Free Will"
Relationships: Michael (The Good Place)/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25





	The Architect

For a few minutes, he didn’t know what to say

Free will. Did _he_ have free will, he found himself wondering, or were all his choices mapped out for him, on some other Architect's storyboard? 

Beside him, she shifted in her seat. The vinyl beneath her cracked unpleasantly, and it made him think incongruously of the lovely cafe he had helped create in another life, another place he had built.

Tilting his gaze towards the tired backsplash behind the bar, his thoughts trundled towards the past (or was it the _future_ in this bearimy of an existence?). 

In his ageless mind, he thought of the neighborhood, and how he had conceived of it... _after_ he had found her file. He remembered poring through its contents, carefully going over everything there was to know about her.

The first time he had finished reading through her life, he had felt the pull, felt the almost- _longing_ urge to meet this creature. Mortal though she was, there was no denying that something about this woman called to him.

Shawn had looked askance at him more than once during that period when he had spent what must have been _years_ memorizing Eleanor Shellstrop. The elder demon had stayed his tongue, though there had been a growing crease between his eyes which had seemed more than a little indecipherable.

In the present, sitting in a greasy spoon in the middle of Arizona, watching her eyes shutter, watching her features rearrange itself into an expression he had never seen in every iteration of hell he had put her through...

The demon wondered if perhaps Shawn saw something in him, which he himself had refused to give name to.

As realization blazed through him, the demon took a deep and unnecessary breath. Standing up, he pushed away his glass of iced tea. Reality twanged together in all its discordant glory.

Ignoring the mortals around them, he focused on her as he had always done, even as he ignored her own superficial fixation on another - a fixation he had nurtured for reasons he’d need to revisit later. Or not at all, perhaps, now that he understood his own mind, his motivations.

Reaching for her, he tugged her into the circle of his arms and observed as her eyes flared in confusion. 

“Michael?” She asked soft. Carefully, her right hand crept up and rested gently against his chest. She touched him where a human heart might have resided were he inclined towards that sort of thing, and he did not fail to notice that she wasn't pushing him away.

“I’m right here,” he said quietly, firmly. “You wanted to know about free will? Know this. This - you - you are the choice I wanted to make. That I've made over and over again. Eleanor, you are my cornerstone, do you understand?”

He had built world after world for her. Now, he was going to build a _universe_ for her. At the back of his mind, he began to understand what it was that had worried Shawn so.

“I...” a spark in her eyes ignited. To him, it was as if she were waking at last from a deep slumber. A slow smile of wonder lit her beautiful face. “You and I...we've danced this dance for a while now, haven't we? It has always been about you and I,”

Gazing down at her, Michael saw the shape of things as they had been, and things that were to come. They were things that gave even beings like the all-powerful judge pause, in the shadows of eternity.

As their lips touched, he felt heaven and hell shift, both for him and for her.

“Mine,” he murmured. Damn anyone who would take her from him, he decided with a force of will he knew to be utterly his own.

***

Somewhere in the ether, demons and angels alike felt the first true stirrings of change, trickling down their spines.

**Author's Note:**

> Watching the show, I thought it was such an obvious thing that I'm still surprised these two are a rare pair. 
> 
> Michael literally built a world around Eleanor, and fixated on her. He delighted in how similar they actually were, so much I actually suspected Eleanor was a demon-in-training to either be his protege or to be his bride...
> 
> But also, I'm a hopeless romantic so my understanding of all text is totally warped.
> 
> Also, yes, I made a tiny Westworld reference considering how those two shows are...well...actually the same show.


End file.
